Startup Review 2: Umbrella Today?

Slogan - "It's like the totally the simplest weather report ever, Julie."

Their Description - The Umbrella Today application is the simplest weather report a person could possibly want. We were frustrated with the constant information overload provided by web and television-based weather reporting services, so we attempted to build a service that answered the one question anyone really cares about - "do I need to bring an umbrella?" The Umbrella Today application was conceived, designed, developed and continues to be maintained entirely by thoughtbot.

Why It Has A Chance - This application really serves its purpose, and does so with the utmost simplicity that everyone will understand it. The idea behind simplicity in application and product is just that, it's easily implemented and adopted by people. It takes all of three steps: 1. enter your location by name or zip code; 2. go to the email you told them to send updates to; 3. copy the phrase and put it into page that they link you to; DONE. I surmise for the iPhone app, it is even simpler (I have a BB, so I wouldn't know. Of course the iPhone app has one drawback, it's $.99 (ouch!). 

As a testament to this product simplicity, I decided to post it on my Facebook, which generates some good user feedback from my closer friends. After only a couple minutes, I was getting notifications on how this application was so easy and how everyone that went to the page had subscribed to the service - I mean, if all it takes to get weather notifications is typing in 5 letters (your zip code), then why wouldn't you want to get notified about impending rain - no one wants to get stuck away from home, in the rain, without an umbrella, am I right? What this site does, it does well - weeding out the main function of weather reports and implementing it into an aesthetically pleasing site with overly simple subscription services. It really redefines the idea of simplicity. Not only does it show it through the Web 2.0 design, but it represents it through application as well.

Secondly, this app is smart in implementing their main service through e-mail subscription. In doing this, they save the trouble of having to work on cross-platform functionality and getting developers for Blackberry, Android, and iPhone (which would cost a buttload). We all know that money is tight, and they let us know when we try to subscribe via text message, telling us that "Sending SMS messages to phones is expensive. Like really expensive. Because of this we use a free method that is unfortunately plagued with delays. Umbrella Today alerts sent via SMS will almost always be delayed by as many as 12 hours." In any case, it fits the bill of successful startup ideas today - easy of use, nice look and feel, and seamless compatibility across all mobile platforms.

Drawbacks - However, in this case, this application's strength is also its weakness. Sure, we all want to know when it is going to rain outside, but what if there is going to be terrible winds or some other kind of "weather phenomenon." I think I'd like to know about those other variables before I encounter it with no preparation before hand. I know they would probably say this service is tailored to the one thing that we could really prepare for, the rain, but I think there are other details about the weather that we would all benefit from. I see this service as something that would replace our need to constantly check the weather reports on Weather.com or Accuweather, or some other source. It would eliminate the need to check applications or websites by providing us with subscription based information that only sends us a notification when we need it - so wouldn't that mean it needs to fill that void of information that these other services are providing? On a day to day basis, I just check the hour-by-hour forecast, so I can see whether or not I will be outside in the rain or what kind of elements I will be encountering, this app should do the same. I'm not asking for a huge report of sorts, but something more than the likes of "You should take your Umbrella Today. p.s. Umbrella Today has an iPhone app! visit http://umbrellatoday.com for more info..."

Future Prospects - As mentioned, I would see a benefit in having a more comprehensive report. In doing this, they would only need to include the major details of the day (temperature included), also including key parts of the day in which the rain trend would change. For example, if at 3pm it was expected to rain, they may write in the message that it would start raining at 3pm and end around 6pm (something along those lines). This way, this service would ensure an overview of the weather forecast and really eliminate the need to go onto applications like Weatherbug or visit Weather.com. However, I think they're launch page is perfect and simple and should not change at all.

Final Thoughts - Every aspiring startup could learn a thing or two from Umbrella Today and the idea of simplicity in design. Umbrella Today does it so flawlessly and is able to include this practice both in their website design and in practice (the function of their application). If more companies would take heed of this need for simplicity in the world, then I think they would be successful. One thing to note is that I think ThoughtBots (the creator) needs to find some kind of medium of advertisement. As it is, it's not publicized in any of the circles I am in, and I am constantly scouring the internet and my regular RSS feeds for cool startups.

Grade (Concept/Beta) - A (Concept), B+ (Beta)

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Op-Ed: The Importance of a Reliable Database

I've decided to take a break from the reviews and do a little op-ed piece on databases. I've recently been doing a little experimenting myself with MySQL and experimenting with my own GoDaddy account. The software MySQL makes setting up a database for storing data and information so easy on a personal site, but I guess that doesn't ensure reliability/stability for your site. I guess the point I'm getting at is the need to establish a reliable database before releasing a website/web-based product that will easily generate a lot of traffic.

This morning, I woke up at 6:55am to attempt to get a ticket to the talk with Bill Clinton at Zellerbach Auditorium about the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He is coming to talk about Global Citizenship: Turning Good Intentions into Positive Action. As good an orator as Bill Clinton is, I obviously wanted to jump on the opportunity of seeing him. Throughout the day before the ticket release, I was consistently barraged with automated emails from campus-wide email lists, department-based email lists, and even from a friend in D.C. that had heard about it before any news came out. Obviously, with all these emails, there was a lot of anticipation for being one of the 2000 people that can fit into Zellerbach. At 7:00am EXACTLY, I clicked the link to sign up for a ticket. Error. I tried again, was it my connection? No. I knew there would be a lot of traffic for the site, but really, enough to block EVERYONE from being able to look at the site? I was sitting with a couple people who were also simultaneously trying to log on, certainly bogging down the system. After multiple error messages (counting 5 different errors), we all go the message - this site had reached max capacity. At around 7:30, a short window was open to all the people trying to get in. The people that were lucky enough to refresh/had a good connection were directed to a Wufoo website, essentially a site that mimics the capabilities of Google Forms. I, unfortunately, was one of the many students that were denied a ticket to something I had spent 1 hour clicking "F5" for. Hey, you win some, you lose some.

My major qualm was the lack of preparedness on the part of the webmaster. WHY would not not prepare for such an event? Did you want to torture us all? My reasoning behind this was, open at 7:00am, as promised, and allow your website to host the multiple site requests from students at Berkeley. I felt like I had been ripped off. Secondly, why use Wufoo, a website that didn't have a trusted database to handle that many requests at once. Hello, Google Docs? I'm sure Google Docs would have been able to take care of the traffic much better than Wufoo. I think this speaks back to the early days of Twitter's "Fail Whale," which still occurs when the entire world wants to tweet about a global issue, recently this was Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. In any case, the event webmaster should have better prepared for this and chosen appropriate services to host the campus-wide event, which would helped to ensure fairness in the ticket distribution process (first come first serve). [It may be attributed to the fact that Berkeley IST servers have less than 5GB memory, and unable to handle this, but I'd rather blame the webmaster for not choosing Google Docs to support the forms].

This incident has really shed some light on the importance of a reliable and high capacity database. All websites that expect large amounts of traffic and high frequency page visits, a database (back-end developer) is just as important as your "look and feel." That is all.

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Power to the Press

Looks like Google really does take public opinion into account, when it comes to a product they would really like to succeed. I honestly think Google is trying to make up for the failure to launch in their Google Wave product. While it showed great promise, coupled with an equal amount of hype, Google Wave turned out to be a product that was both slow, incomprehensible, and not very useful for everyday communication. So I guess it wasn't really anywhere close to taking over email (or a replacement for email in the new century).

In any case, this post about the power of the press. After Google Buzz released early last week, there have been posts, comments, reviews galore about the product. I even did a short piece on my insights for the product, future prospects, and a final grade, of which I gave it an A-. I followed up with a brief "updates" portion that described two things that Google Buzz NEEDED to have for better functionality, #1 was collapsible comment threads.

Well it seems like the public was able to reach out in this case. I'm not sure if it was Mashable or just a general shout for collapsible threads that prompted it, but as of around 8:20 PST, it looks like collapsible threads have been integrated into my buzz feed, which has significantly cut the lag time associated with reading my friend's/subscribed buzzes. In any case, I wanted to point out that Mashable was doing a buzz of it's own which called on its HUGE fan base to see what really needed to change with Buzz. Apparently collapsible threads was something that everyone else wanted, so after much discussion, Mashable submitted the request to Google and it looks like it has finally been taken into serious consideration.

Good move Google. I also commend you on your approach to dealing with Buzz privacy issues. Bravo!

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What's All The "Buzz" About

via youtube.com

Google launched a product called Buzz today, which has become available to many, but some remain in the dark as to when they will get the Google Social Networking medium integrated into their own Gmail accounts.

Why It Will Catch On -

Buzz is different than that other product that Google launched a few months ago that got a considerably higher audience...ahem, Wave. I feel like the vital flaw that Wave made was that it was 1. extremely slow when you had multiple collaborators and a 10+ page long wave, and 2. it was a completely new system, with a new interface that people need to adapt to. For some, this obstacle would cause them to give up and not even attempt to learn its function, but for others, a hyped up Google product is worth the 10 minutes of learning. Wave did a good job of describing how it was supposed to work and ultimately, how it would take over e-mail. Well, I don't know about you, but it hasn't really made that impression to me. The thing that Buzz does is integrate it within the Gmail client, so even if it doesn't make it to become its own separate product to battle with the likes of Twitter and Facebook, it will be easy to use and integrate into your daily routine.

Another cool thing about its functionality is that it allows you to incorporate all the cool ideas of Wave - almost instantaneously sharing pictures, video, text, and news - and integrating it into the Gmail system that everyone has learned to love. One thing that is probably done intentionally, but I wish it didn't, is create Google product exclusivity. Instead of making it only available to GMail users, why not extend it to Hotmail and Yahoo!Mail users. I'm sure this would get a lot more end users who probably wouldn't drop their entire email service/history with Yahoo! or MSN to check out a new product.

Another component that I like is that it will become fully mobile soon and with its own mobile interface, excluding other APIs, it will have a monopoly on the program that launches Buzz. This means that there will only be the GoogleBuzz application on the phones, not UberBuzz or BuzzPhon - I think. Furthermore, its location/geo-tagging capabilities make it really awesome for connecting with people in the area (as Google Latitude had done, but failed to draw attention). While this may be creepy, services like Gowalla, Foursquare, and now Yelp make geo-tagging even more popular and socially acceptable.

What Does This Mean for Twitter and Facebook -

I think Twitter and Facebook will still forever have a following. Buzz is a product that fits in between structured and "boring" email, if you will, and the excitement of social media. It gives you more control of who you contact and who is reading your buzz, which gives a stronger feeling of "security." I think it will catch on quite strong, but it won't take out the powerhouses of social media. It's just a good, all-around means to connect to your friends and share what you are doing/looking at.

Final Comments -

This is a great product introduced by Google. While it is essentially social networking/social media, it doesn't necessary emit that aura of Facebookiness because it doesn't seem to generate that "spamming viral video" effect that I think Twitter and Facebook do a good job with. I always seem to get and see random and useless things on Twitter, but Buzz will be about the things you want to see and the people you want to hear from. It's active limitations make it a good product, but one in its own realm.

Grade - A- (Overall)

For more, check out TechCrunch and Mashable on the latest developments. This is one of my favorites from Mashable, though I know there are more to come: http://mashable.com/2010/02/09/google-buzz-reactions/

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